With the development of the communications technology, more and more application functions have been integrated into a terminal device, and in the foregoing application functions, a requirement for inputting a character in an input box may be involved. Generally speaking, after receiving an input character input by a user, the terminal device may display, according to the input character and in stripe structure order, candidate characters corresponding to the input character. After receiving selection information triggered by a function key or screen touching by the user on the terminal device, the terminal device may acquire a candidate character, selected in the selection information, as a to-be-processed character according to the selection information, so as to process the to-be-processed character.
In the prior art, because the terminal device displays, in the stripe structure order, the candidate characters corresponding to the received input character, a visual error of the user may be easily caused, so that the position of each candidate character in the strip structure may be easily misread, which leads to decreased display efficiency and display accuracy.